"... And a ship trying to land on those cliffs might very well pitch
over into the sea. That is, if she were trying to land on emergency
rockets."
Rockets--that brings home the ancientness of this ship
_Gilgamesh_--but after all the ships that settled Incognita probably
carried emergency rockets, too.
This settled, the meeting turns into a briefing session and merges
imperceptibly with the beginning of the job.
* * * * *
The job of course is Faking the background of the crash; working out
the past history and present aims of the Lost Kafoozalum. We have to
invent a planet and what's more difficult convey all the essential
information about it by the sort of sideways hints you gather among
peoples' personal possessions; diaries, letters et cetera; and what is
even _more_ difficult we have to leave out anything that could lead to
definite identification of our unknown world with any known one.
We never gave that world a name; it might be dangerous. Who speaks of
their world by name, except to strangers? They call it "home"--or
"Earth," as often as not.
Some things have been decided for us. Language, for instance--one of
two thousand or so Earth tongues that went out of use late enough to
be plausible as the main language of a colonized planet. The settlers
on Incognita were not of the sort to take along dictionaries of the
lesser-known tongues, so the computers at Russett had a fairly wide
choice.
We had to take a hypnocourse in that language. Ditto the script, one
of several forgotten phonetic shorthands. (Designed to enable the
tongues of Aliens to be written down; but the Aliens have never been
met. It is plausible enough that some colony might have kept the
script alive; after all Thasia uses something of the sort to this
day.)
The final result of our work looks pretty small. Twenty-three
"Personal Background Sets"--a few letters, a diary in some, an
assortment of artifacts. Whoever stocked this ship we are on supplied
wood, of the half-dozen kinds that have been taken wherever men have
gone; stocks of a few plastics--known at the time of the Exodus, or
easily developed from those known, and not associated with any
particular planet. Also books on Design, a Form-writer for translating
drawings into materials, and so on. Someone put in a lot of work
before this voyage began.
Most of the time it is like being back on Russet doing a group
Project. What we are working on has no more and no less reality than
that. Our work is all read into a computer and checked against
everybody else's. At first we keep clashing. Gradually a consistent
picture builds up and gets translated finally into the Personal
Background Kits. The Lost Kafoozalum start to exist like people in a
History book.
Fifteen days hard work and we have just about finished; then we
reach--call it Planet Gilgamesh.
I wake in my bunk to hear that there will be brief cessation of
weight; strap down, please.
We are coming off Mass-Time to go on planetary drive.
Colonel Delano-Smith is in charge of operations on the planet, with
Ram and Peter to assist. None of the rest of us see the melting out of
fifty years' accumulation of ice, the pumping away of the water, the
fitting and testing of the holds for the grappling-beams. We stay
inside the ship, on five-eighths gee which we do not have time to get
used to, and try to work, and discard the results before the computer
can do so. There is hardly any work left to do, anyway.
It takes nearly twelve hours to get the ship free, and caulked, and
ready to lift. (Her hull has to be patched because of Mr. Yardo's
operations which make use of several sorts of vapors). Then there is a
queer blind period with Up now one way, now another, and sudden jerks
and tugs that upset everything not in gimbals or tied down;
interspersed with periods when weightlessness supervenes with no
warning at all. After an hour or two of this it would be hard to say
whether Mental or physical discomfort is more acute; B consulted,
however, says my autonomic system must be quite something, after five
minutes _her_ thoughts were with her viscera entirely.
Then, suddenly, we are back on Mass-Time again.
Two days to go.
* * * * *
At first being on Mass-Time makes everything seem normal again. By
sleep time there is a strain, and next day it is everywhere. I know as
well as any that on Mass-Time the greater the mass the faster the
shift; all the same I cannot help feeling we are being slowed, dragged
back by the dead ship coupled to our live one.
When you stand by the hull _Gilgamesh_ is only ten feet away.
I should have kept something to work on like B and Kirsty who have not
done their Letters for Home in Case of Accidents; mine is signed and
sealed long ago. I am making a good start on a Neurosis when
Delano-Smith announces a Meeting for one hour ahead.
Hurrah! now there is a time-mark fixed I think of all sorts of things
I should have done before; for instance taking a look at the controls
of the Hoppers.
I have been in one of them half an hour and figured out most of the
dials--Up down and sideways are controlled much as in a helicar, but
here a big viewscreen has been hooked in to the autopilot--when
across the hold I see the air lock start to move.
_Gilgamesh_ is on the other side.
It takes forever to open. When at last it swings wide on the dark
tunnel what comes through is a storage rack, empty, floating on
antigrav.
What follows is a figure in a spacesuit; modern type, but the windows
of the hopper are semipolarized and I cannot make out the face inside
the bubble top.
He slings the rack upon the bulkhead, takes off the helmet and hangs
that up, too. Then he just stands. I am beginning to muster enough
sense to wonder why when he comes slowly across the hold.
Reaching the doorway he says: "Oh it's you, Lizzie. You'll have to
help me out of this. I'm stuck."
M'Clare.
The outside of the suit is still freezing cold; maybe this is what has
jammed the fastening. After a few minutes tugging it suddenly gives
away. M'Clare climbs out of the suit, leaving it standing, and says,
"Help me count these, will you?"
_These_ are a series of transparent containers from a pouch slung at
one side of the suit. I recognize them as the envelopes in which we
put what are referred to as Personal Background Sets.